Living and Loving
When they arrived at their destination in Hawaii, there was an error in their booking dates (December 22 and 24).
Then as they were preparing to fly back to Canada, all the flights were cancelled….
“If you are unable to get out, just come back, you can stay here. I will leave a key for you,” they were told.
They enjoyed two extra days in the sun and warm.
That “booking error” was looking like a blessing!
Having been displaced in her snowbird home by Hurricane Ian, she spent almost a month with family on her way to a home-away-from her normal away-from home. She had some laptop computer challenges earlier while staying with their daughter in Tennessee, but when she got to Florida her laptop would not boot up.
She logged onto Zoom with her iPhone to be with her Florida meditation group and overheard some conversation. “Have you heard anything from Adam since the hurricane?”
“No, I have not,” the teacher replied.
So many she knows have been affected, her compassion was right at the surface. Then the conversation took an interesting turn as the student continued, “Adam is the only person I would trust my computer to….”
Excitedly excusing herself for intruding, she said she needed to have Adam’s contact information because she had been unable to log on to her computer since she had left Tennessee!
It will come to pass that before they call,
I will answer;
and while they are still speaking,
I will hear.
~ Isaiah 65:24
Sacred Stories
She was feeling such disappointment, hurt, and anger. Her husband had essentially told her he could not support her plans to go to Morocco. Her daughter felt the same way, “You are too old. That ship has sailed….”
Pouring out her heart about all of this the following day, her sister listened and expressed compassion, then asked her to speak of what the idea of the trip meant to her. “Almost like a vision quest. Out of my comfort zone. Wanting to prove to myself I am capable. Learning a lot about fear. I have a heart connection with the friend I have met online and I would like to meet her. I want to go to the desert.”
Her sister looked up ‘desert spiritual meaning’ and read out loud to her essentially all her heart had just spoken!
The desert symbolizes survival, creativity, clarity, revelations, loneliness, and overcoming life’s greatest obstacles.
Metaphorically, the desert is a place of testing and transformation, of being divested of empire and ego. In the desert experience, the dreams, goals, and visions of the false self can be seen clearly, sometimes for the first time. The desert symbolizes the terrain in which we unlearn empire spirituality.
Wow….
“You have a clear sense of what it is for you,” her sister said, fully understanding the feelings of disappointment and anger. “It might be helpful to be clear on that intention and be open to multiple ways to integrate all of this in your life. It seems that thinking there is only one way something can happen is the ego and the empire spirituality the symbolism is describing.”
Even with the feelings still present, she could see truth in that.
The following morning her sister’s supposedly-randomly-selected screen saver was a desert scene, and this message from the book The Language of Letting Go: Daily Meditations on Codependency shared by a friend spoke so succinctly of the situation:
Too often, we try to gain a clear perspective before it is time. That will make us crazy. We do not always know why things are happening the way they are….
Today, I will let things happen without trying to figure everything out. If clarity is not available to me today, I will trust it to come later, in retrospect. I will put simple trust in the truth that all is well, events are unfolding as they should, and all will work out for good in my life—better than I can imagine.
Sacred Stories
Her toddler great-grandson had been going through serious health issues for the past few weeks. Her Yellow Brick Road (blog) post that morning had been about meeting the chaos in the world by resting, not wrestling. Here is a brief excerpt:
Thinking outside of the box, moving through experiences with presence, having an open heart, listening without judgment — these are the transformative results of RESTING.
Resting. Not wrestling.
Go to http://scs-matters.com/YellowBrickRoad/all-of-the-rest/ to read the full post.
Shortly after her post went live, the following words appeared on her Facebook feed:
Sacred Stories
She was a bit rushed as she finished blow-drying her hair and reached to remove her curling iron from the bottom drawer. The plug to the cord was stuck on something. She wrestled with it and tried without success to get it freed before hearing the internal message to stop struggling so much and get down to a better position.
“Now, slow down a bit. Be easier. Quit trying so hard….” a stream of encouragement poured into her consciousness through her mind’s ear.
Rolling up the small rug, she knelt on the floor in front of the drawers. Reaching into the underneath of the drawer above, she could feel the end of the plug. Tracing the cord, however, she could not feel any port of release. The thought came that perhaps the plug was sideways and needed just to be turned in the other direction. It took a lot of doing – she had essentially only two fingers to work with. The conclusion was clear: the plug did not come free in either direction.
“They need to move forward together….” she heard clearly.
Easing her left hand under the upper drawer, she was able to use her right hand to hold the cord while wedging her right elbow into the corner of the lower drawer. With gently push and slow and steady pressure, both drawers were able to slide forward in the same movement.
Henry Ford said, “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”
Yep, takes teamwork….
Sacred Stories
So, when she first made it to their “West Coast Casa” after their weekend community took a direct hit from Hurricane Ian, the sign that had a prominent place right next to the door, had been a casualty. That sign had so much sentimental value.
Sifting through the devastation, she was able to find three pieces out of the five pieces. She honestly thought that it was just a total loss because of the enormous damage from the wind and the storm surge. A neighbor’s boat was found a few streets away, while his boat trailer had stayed in the yard!
Who knew where the other pieces would/could be?
Two weeks went by, and while they were helping their next door neighbor by picking up the debris in her back yard, she found one piece! She was so happy, she still had some hope that she would find the other piece that was missing. She looked and looked in both yards, and between the two….
Some time went by. Debris was being piled in the streets and picked up and hauled away. She had made peace that she was not going to find the missing piece. She reached out to the artist who make this one for them, inquiring whether she could just replace the missing piece for them. Or, she would just buy another.
Many of their neighbors don’t live in Florida year round and have not been able to get to their properties yet. She has been taking photos and videos, and for the neighbors kitty corner from them, she’s even been going into the house a few times to check on things for them. This week, those neighbors asked if she and her husband would go check on the lanai and open up some windows.
As she and her husband were walking toward the lanai, he started screaming. When she turned around, he was grinning from ear-to-ear and holding up the missing piece to their sign!
That last piece….
Found!
DEE & ANT’S
WEST COAST CASA
Est. 2015
“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” ~ Galatians 6:9
This post was started on October 17, 2022. Today is now ten days later. I cannot explain fully what derailed my completing the entry, but, say only, a lot has changed during this interim. The post began with this:
The Mother to Debra (10/16/2022)
I love you.
I know you heard what I said to the friend before you. The joys, the challenges, and with the challenge, “What gift have you brought me?”
You are wise, My Dear One, and you understand that the challenge comes with a gift, but sometimes in your hurry to get through the challenge you don’t pause long enough to really see and to know the gift. Watch that fix-it mind that wants to push through it rather than pausing and saying, “Yes, ah…. Challenge, challenge. I am here to receive your gift.”
And just rest there for a bit.
The gifts reveal themselves to you but you’re still in a hurry to move through the challenge rather than experiencing the fullness of the gifts.
“What gift have you brought me? Thank you. Thank you.”
And it’s fine at the same time to say, “Yes, but this is too heavy for me right now so I wish to release it.” It’s fine to ask that, and the gift will return again in another form.
I am with you and helping you. I love you.
The “challenge” over the past few days surrounds our 22-month-old great grandson, Jackson. On Monday evening, October 24, Jackson had a seizure. He was taken by ambulance and admitted to Pediatric Intensive Care at Children’s Hospital at Erlanger in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he has continued to have absence seizures, meaning they are detected on the EEG, but not by the human eye.
Imagine a toddler with tubes and leads and restraints, and lots of pokes and lots of medications, and nothing at all normal…. that is where Himz (one of our nickname for Jackson) still is at the time of this post on Thursday morning, October 27.
Of course, our concern and compassion is for Jackson, but also for his mom, our granddaughter, Courtney. And for our daughter, Stacey, Courtney’s mom. And for Jackson’s dad; Papa Bear, G-Pa…. Uncles, Brad and Adam. We are all shook to the core with these developments.
John is so bonded to Jackson. Jackson was a major part of John’s healing goals when he went through the open-heart surgery in January. Getting to Tennessee in April on our way back to Michigan was about seeing Jackson.The color of Jackson’s favorite green blanket became a cue image for John’s recovery.
This has been such a clear time for me of noticing myriad points of view in a single experience. My own childhood medical trauma (being hospitalized and treated for polio at age five); my terror when Stacey was about that age and face-planted into a fieldstone fireplace requiring a trip to the emergency room for stitches; month’s old grandson Brad’s being taken by ambulance during a Saturday night snowstorm with RSV…. Seeing every condition like waves in the ocean. Each appearing as separate, but part of the whole.
Here is a recent photo of Jackson happily eating his first sandwich.
I was not very skillful when Stacey had to have stitches. In fact, they would not allow me to go into the room with her because I was so distraught. The memory of John and me leaving the hospital with our baby (Stacey) folded into the crib under an oxygen tank with her baby (Brad) is as active now as it was 32 years ago.
Each experience is woven together. Some threads are more obvious. Some patterns are more hidden.
On Tuesday afternoon as Jackson was being sedated for an MRI, having a spinal tap to rule out some infection that might be causing the seizures, and wired with a continual EEG…. I wrote in my journal: “Good can come from this.”
At meditation online that afternoon Sheilana’s poignant opening words, ”Why do we try to figure it out? Why don’t we just live and breathe and let it just be what it is? Is there any reason for me to believe that it should be anything or any way other than it is?”
The theme for that evening’s class with Barbara Brodsky: When something startles you, or pain arises or fear, what state and stage of consciousness opens habitually with that challenge?
Wednesday morning waiting news about how they were all doing, I put the following scripture on the Basham Family list:
Romans 8:26
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans….
Again this morning I wrote in my journal: “Good can come from this.”
P.S. On Wednesday afternoon Stacey stepped out of Jackson’s room to give us a call. It was the first time we had spoken on the phone since all of this occurred and she was crying. A stranger handed her a card. Many of you have seen that card in a Sacred story post, but for any who have not, here is the link: Card From a Stranger
P.S.S. Just as I was about to push publish, news that when the EEG was taken off Jackson sat up and smiled. His mom said, “I never knew how much I missed that smile!”
Sacred Stories
Her 22-month-old grandson was in Pediatric ICU. She had stepped out of his room to call her parents. As she tearfully shared all of what was unfolding, a stranger handed her a card.
The words written on the envelope spoke right to her heart:
The inside of the card was also filled with encouraging scriptures:
Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in you. In God (I will praise his word). In God I have put my trust. I will not fear.
A total affirmation of her faith, this card from a stranger….
~ From “Views of the Faith Mind”
We are so very conditioned to polarities, we sometimes take for granted they “exist.”
What if polarities are really just conditioned states of mind?
In The Sound of Silence, Ajahn Sumedho describes a state that is “ever present but only noticed if attended to.”
My blood pressure has been up again since Hurricane Ian came onshore in our beloved community in Southwest Florida, before driving destruction onward across the state and on up into North Carolina. As I was sitting with all of that on October 12, I realized the elevated blood pressure might really be Europe anniversary energy from 2011. I was going to the foot doctor later in the morning so I sat a clear intention to have everything be released with the day’s procedure.
Before leaving for my appointment I did a drawing and heard song lyrics in my head: What goes up, must come down; spinning wheel got to go round; talkin’ bout your troubles, it’s a cryin’ sin.
Then a poem:
My past is a thief robbing me of today
but only if I hold on — that’s the only way
I breathe in
I breathe out
I let go
I move out
No more ruminating
this is the root
today renders all those yesterdays
absolutely moot
Today the autumn hues
can erase a history of blues
the reds
yellows bright
orange shining
with glorious light
These cells and pores
win or lose
when I’m saving scores
wipe the slate clean
that’s what we mean
Do it now
let it go
Compassion
can and will flow
Debra Basham October 12, 2022
After I got home from the doctor, I had the first normal blood pressure reading in several days. I finished reading The Cherry Harvest, by Lucy Sanna. I did not like the ending. Online I saw this line in one review, “Really digs into the hidden behaviors that people often have but would never admit.” I wrote in my journal that I prefer a happy ending.
John Lennon is credited with saying everything will be okay in the end, so if it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
More from “Views of the Faith Mind” that resonates with all of this:
Although all dualities come from the One,
do not be attached even to this One.
When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way,
nothing in the world can offend.
And when a thing can no longer offend,
it ceases to exist in the old way.
A few minutes ago I went out and took a video of the sky. To the left and to the right of a heavy band of clouds there was blue sky. It was so obvious that what you see depends on where you are looking.
A lot of life related to wintering in Pine Island has ceased to exist in the old way, yet another opportunity to breathe in and out and let go….